Sunday, February 7, 2016

Arabic placenames are fairly common throughout most of Spain, the further south the more they predominate. This is not surprising since many parts of Spain were occupied for several hundred years by the Moors.

Many of these names begin with the letters 'Al', 'Ben,' 'Gibra, 'Cala'' or 'Guadal' Many river names begin with the element 'Guadal' too. Arabic is a Semitic language and so these names are not related to names in any other parts of Europe, apart from similar names in Portugal, Sicily, and Malta.. There are also a few placenames in Spain which are of Carthaginian origin, also a Semitic language, long extinct now though.

Friday, February 5, 2016

In English butterflies are so called because their shit looks like butter...not because the name is a mispronunciation of 'flutter by.' In most other languages the word has a completely different origin though.

In Russian the origin of the word is 'peasant woman' or 'grandmother' The same word is also used for 'bow tie.' Several Romance languages use variations of the original Latin 'papilio' which also had the meaning of 'tent.' This is where the word 'pavilion' comes from.

A butterfly is known as a 'summer fly' or even a 'summer bird' in various Germanic languages. and in ancient Greek the word for 'butterfly' was the same as 'soul,' but in Modern Greek butterflies are 'petals.'

Monday, February 1, 2016

All of these places are located in the north eastern corner of the country, an area that was previously part of German East Prussia. This type of placename is concentrated in this area, but similar names are found all over Poland.